1980: a Year of Frustration

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BL workers march in support of Derek Robinson • NIOC Tory leaders delighted at their easy ride behind the Labour Party's defeat the Tories is "through demonstration against unem - the ballot box"-in 1984! Send to: WSL, BM Box 5277, London WCIN 3XX.

insist that the only way to the year that perhaps this What did of the labor Like feeble c they chose march their r of the hilldown again.

On March Sunday dem‹ thousands tu empty speer leaders.

On May 1 Day of Act workers igno union leader! to lunch-tir stopped work 250,000 j strations the throughout still they we spective for a Tories.

And on 1 the biggest n 100,000 W Terry A year of plummeting living standards and rocketing unemployment; a year of victimisations and savage ETU speed-up; a year of slashed social services and growing NS.M.M homelessness; 1980 was all of those things for the British working class.

But above all 1980 was a year of massive anger, pent-up militancy-and growing frustration as workers time and again saw their leaders grovel to Thatcher and sabotage any prospect of a fight to halt the Tory offensive.

Crushed The year began with the steel strike, and calls for an allWales General Strike to go beyond the pay battle to resist all closures. The General Strike call was crushed by the TUC and the closures accepted by the steel unions. And the year ended with the announcement of yet another 20,000 redundancies in the steel industry, while Welsh union bureaucrats welcomed the news!

Twice during 1980 union leaders gave notice of all-out strike action in British Leyland -and twice BL workers were forced to witness a miserable last-minute sell-out to Michael Edwardes which sent management cock-a-hoop into renewed ISTC - NUB attacks on the shop floor. : 1980 began with Derek DON'T Robinson victimised at Long- SCABI PAY bridge and union leaders sabotaging action in his defence; it YOUR HUH! THE - DUS AN looks. certain to end with six more shop stewards and five STRIKE STEEL other workers being victimised at Longbridge-while union NOW WORKERS leaders sit back in silence.

Tenacity The Tories forged ahead with a tenacity and a commitment never seen from the leaders of the labour movement.

Ruthlessly they cut and hacked away at health, education, social services, unemployment and sick pay, civil service jobs and public sector industries.

They halted council house building. They penalised overspending" Labour councils.

They announced a 6% pay limit for public sector workers for at least two years. They brought in savage anti-union legislation.

And all the time the dole Steelworkers demand support queues, fed on a diet of monetarist policies, grew and grew.

• Dukes of York the union leaders ur movement do? old Dukes of York three occasions to nembers to the top -and march them 1 9 it was the TUC's onstration. Tens of irned out-to hear ches from union 14 it was the TUC tion. Two million red the pleas of s to restrict action ne meetings-and Joined local demonat day in towns the country: but re offered no periction to defeat the Jovember 29 came narch so far. Over ployment-to hear Michael Foot orkers mobilised EDWARDES stubborn opposition by ethe labour bureaucrats to action against the Tories might be The October conference of the Labour Party -in sharp distinction from the miserable display at the 1980 TUC Congress -carried an emergency Lambeth resolution calling for all-out action to defeat the cuts in the public sector.

The same conference overturned the Callaghan leadership CHLAL STON by forcing through mandatory reselection of MPs and demands for a more democratic means of electing the Party leader.

Regroup But since that point the right wing has begun to regroup and mobilise to overturn these reforms.

Union block votes now seem set to back an *electoral Please more details about the Name Address There have been signs during college" dominated by the right wing rump of the Parliamentary Labour Party-and union bureaucrats are already packing GMCs with right wing placemen to prevent the selection of socialist candidates. A right wing Shadow Cabinet has been elected by MPs. The fight for Labour Party democracy has a long way still to go.

It is indeed in the final few months of 1980 that the treachery of union leaders in sabotaging action against the Tories has reached its peak.

As the autumn pay round began, engineering employers, encouraged by Terry Duffy's assurances that the union leaders were not in militant mood, forced home a miserable 8.2% pay' settlement for two million workers covered by the Confed.

This left BL workers in the Workers Socialist forefront of the fight-faced with a further humiliating pay offer from Edwardes after two successive years in which 5% deals had been imposed.

There was huge shop floor support for strike action against Edwardes 6.8% "final" offer, which means a further cut in real pay of over 10% for BL workers.

A strike at BL-the heart of the engineering industry and also a part of the public sector -would have offered a lead to millions of other workers facing pay reviews.

Union officials fought tooth and nail to avert the strike-and were assisted in this by the Communist Party in the shape of Longbridge convenor Jack Adams, who managed to procure a mass meeting vote against strike action.

The BL sell-out was followed at once by the Tory announcement of the 6% pay limit in the public sector.

Compromise

Powerful and potentially embarrassing sections of public sector workers-the miners, the water workers and the firemenhave been offered compromise deals to avert strike action.

Elsewhere the Tories have shrewdly • assessed that public sector union leaders like Fisher, Drain, Basnett and COHSE leader Spanswick have no intention of fighting a pay limithowever low it may be. And the stage has been set for a new pay sell-out in steel.

The BL betrayal has thus altered the whole shape of the class struggle in the next few months. Mass action on pay -despite the militancy of the membership-seems likely to be combatted in every case by union leaders who prefer to see Thatcher remain in office than workers mobilised in action to oust the Tories.

The fight to defend living standards; to defend jobs and public services; to defend union rights; and to carry through the kind of fight for socialist policies implicitly demanded by Labour conference delegates, demands the construction of a new, revolutionary leadership in the working class.

The lessons of 1980-and our role in these and other key struggles (see overleaf) confirm the need for socialists to join th the Workers Socialist League in its fight to build such a leadership.

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first national strike by steel- battles Last winter's pay crucial stage. workers, water workers and Press pointed to the necessity workers if the Tories were to January 21 was crushed by Len preservation of all jobs as a con- League in this situation utilised betrayal of victimised covenor these Tories ang despite and for BL private steel firms, and by the main industrial plants. on the pay claim. ed our analysis that what they Strike united very different ideas. They were pledged to support the strike. keeping production so far-the imposition of a 5% forced was the year in into our members and not Pay tunity to strike together against The enemy-the to include an agreement for the leaders anxiously warned that a action by BL workers against As the Welsh TUC's call for to combat such isolation-first by for calling out its members in rolling throughout the engineer- We steel- Was through by ISTC leader Bill Sirs. a 'compromise offer to the steel strings. deal with Day for he May 14 hay st ke tall, supporters ST P ESS, Wednesda TGWU issue an instruction that issued a call for strike action on Of 980.

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UNITY N.U.V.B STRENGTH T. G.W.U.

N.U.S.MW.. C. BRITISH LEYLAND 31° SMASHTHE

THE WS